Bend Mobile – a concept phone only its father could love

If there’s one thing I love about concept phones, it’s the fact that they’re completely unconstrained by the laws of economics, business, marketing, or even in some cases, the laws of physics!

A concept phone is just that – a concept, showing what could be done if the phone were left solely to a designer without a care for whether or not it could actually be built, much less whether it could be built for a reasonable price.

Mind you, although some are undoubtedly stunning pieces of design, not all of them are what you might call attractive. You can see what I mean after the jump…

Take, for example, this latest design by designer Andy Kurovets. It’s called the Bend Mobile concept phone, but unfortunately looks more like a FrankenPhone, with borrowed bits of other gadgetry bolted onto it in an almost arbitrary manner.

The camera, for example, is an odd little unit bolted onto the side that pops out like a silver tumour whenever it’s needed. There’s an odd concept of a double screen that gives you extra screen real estate when browsing the Web (no bad thing), but which doesn’t exactly integrate all that well with the rest of the phone’s design. Given that a concept phone is all about design, that’s not exactly a good thing!

And as for the colour?! Yeesh! Now I know why mobile phone are black, silver or occasionally pink!

Finally, we can’t ignore the shape of the phone. It’s curved, apparently, to facilitate easing in and out of your trouser pocket. In other words, the Bend Mobile really was purposefully designed to look like an arse!

The Bend Mobile will never go on sale, and for that we have to be truly thankful. In the meantime, if you want to see an example of a concept phone that’s so beautiful in its design it should be classed as a piece of art, check out a Sony Ericsson concept phone that was created a couple of years ago. Never made it to full production, but beautiful nonetheless.

[Source: Yanko Design, Andy Kurovets]